Bing Rewards for Windows Phone 8/8.1

There are those who gravitate naturally towards coupons and money-saving deals and those who don't. For the former, Microsoft is now offering a Bing Rewards app for Windows Phone, making it much easier for Bing users to reap rewards for using the service.

Bing Rewards is like an airline frequent flyer program or a credit card membership rewards program: You earn rewards by using the service. In this case, the service is the Bing search engine and the rewards are, well, all kinds of things.

To take advantage of Bing Rewards, you need to sign up at the Bing Rewards web site using your Microsoft account. And then you need to use Bing for web searches, of course. But you can earn credits in other ways too: You can make Bing your home page, try new Bing features, explore Bing tips and tricks, and check in with Bing Rewards each day to learn about that day's special deals.

After you've earned enough credits, you can redeem them for rewards. Looking at my paltry 593 credits—I'm one of those guys who is not good about this kind of thing—I can pick up such rewards a three months of ad-free Outlook.com (270 points), a $5 Windows Store gift card (465 points) or a $5 Amazon.com gift card (475 points), among many others. If you're better about this than I am, and most people will be, you will obviously have a better and bigger range of awards from which to choose.

So. Bing Rewards for Windows Phone. What is that all about?

According to Microsoft, this app provides the following features:

Account management. You can manage your Bing Rewards account from the app.

Earn credits. Right from the main view in the app, you can find out new ways to earn credits.

Redeem credits. The Redeem view helps you view rewards and redeem your credits on the go.

Enter sweepstakes. I don't see this in the app at the moment, but Bing Rewards occasionally runs contests where you can win a Windows Phone or whatever.

Find new ways to earn every day. The available offers in the app's main view change each day with new promotions.

Track credits and offers from the live tile. You can pin the Bing Rewards app to your start screen to track available credits and complete daily offers.